Three dead in Tweed River tragedy in Tumbulgum, northern New South Wales
A TWEED mother was desperately trying to free her children trapped in a sinking car when she died yesterday. She was found in the sunken wreck holding one of her children.
Gold Coast
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A TWEED mother was desperately trying to free her children trapped in a sinking car when she died yesterday, police say.
Stephanie King, 43, was found with one of her children in her arms when police divers pulled her body and the bodies of her two children Jacob, 7, and Ella-Jane, 11, from the sunken wreckage of their car in the Tweed River this afternoon.
“That woman is a hero, she died trying to save her children,” Tweed Byron LAC Superintendent Wayne Starling said today.
“I have no doubt she would still be alive if she wasn’t trying to save her children.”
When asked how they knew she was trying to save them, he responded: “The mother was trying to get one of the children out of the car when she passed away. She was holding the child.”
Supt Starling said the sole surviving child, Chloe, 9, had miraculously escaped after the crash and was in the care of her father.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the mother helped her out,” he said.
The 43-year-old aged care nurse lost control of her car on Dulguigan Road at Tumbulgum yesterday, plunging into the river with her three children.
She and her two children remained ‘entombed’ in the vehicle overnight after it was deemed too dangerous to retrieve them.
Police divers retrieved the bodies shortly after midday today. The car wreckage has not been retrieved but a crane is on standby for later this afternoon.
Ms King’s friend Alicia Morgan said she had known the family for years because their kids had both gone to Tumbulgum Primary School for a period together.
Ms King then transferred her children to Dungay Public School this year, she said.
“I have no words, Steph was the sort of mother who would do anything for the kids, she was such a community-minded person, she would get in there and help anyone who needed a hand,” she said.
“My daughter and Chloe went right though school together ... She and my daughter were friends.”
Ms Morgan described Chloe as a “tough nut” but said she would need all the support she could get after what happened.
Emotions were high at Ms King’s former workplaces where the Tweed local was held in high regard among her colleagues.
She worked at Tweed Heads Bowls Club for some time before moving on to work at Opal Aged Care at Tweed.
Tributes have been flowing for Stephanie King and her two children following the horrific accident.
One friend wrote on social media, “It makes me sick knowing a beautiful family is still in the water, such a precious loss to all that knew you, I know I will miss you terribly”.
A woman who said she was Ms King’s ‘best friend’ was too distraught to speak about the mother-of-three this morning.
One neighbour Steven Moller said he would often say hi to Ms King outside her home and his heart went out to the family.
“They were a perfectly normal family, I would see her loading her kids into the car,” he said.
“I only saw her the other day.”
Earlier today, police were searching the Tweed River to retrieve the bodies of a mother and her two children who lay ‘entombed’ in a submerged car after a horror crash yesterday.
The 43-year-old woman’s car flipped into the river while she was travelling on Dulguigan Road, Tumbulgum early yesterday afternoon, trapping her, her seven-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter.
Knowing a mother and her two children were just metres away as they sunk to the bottom of the Tweed River has devastated a former police officer who tried to rescue them.
As the car sank with her mother and siblings trapped inside, the girl ran to a nearby home where her family are believed to have been staying to raise the alarm.
But by the time they had returned to the river’s edge the car had disappeared from sight and all that remained was a trail of bubbles.
“They had no chance, no chance,” said former highway patrol officer Matt Grinham, who tried to rescue the family along with two other men.
Mr Grinham, who retired last year after 23 in the job, spoke of the anguish he felt at not being able to reach the family.
“It’s never easy. It was just the helplessness of not being able to find the car,” he said.
“The bubbles were there. We could find the bubbles. We just couldn’t get to the car.
“It was just too deep, too cold, as soon as you opened your eyes underwater it was horrendous. It was freezing cold.”
Mr Grinham said he was travelling to help clean up flood damage at a relative’s property across the river from the accident with his two children Thomas, 15, and Sophie, 12.
He said he didn’t know what had happened until a woman nearby told him. That’s when he saw the skid marks leading to the water.
“She just looked so frantic,” Mr Grinham said. “Then I saw the skid marks on the road.”
He said recent rains had made the search almost impossible. “It was hard to keep swimming against the current, you had to keep coming up and all you could see was the bubbles,” he said.
“At first we were going feet first just pushing down to try and see if we could feel it with our feet. I tried a couple of times.
“(But the bubbles) They trailed away. They just got less and less.”
The child who managed to escape from the car was taken to Tweed Heads District Hospital with cuts and lacerations to her lower legs as well as neck pain.
The occupants of the house where she raised the alarm, Ben Darcy and his partner Sabrina Colomb, also spoke of their deep shock at what had happened.
Mr Darcy and his brother-in-law also leapt into the murky, flood-swollen river to try to rescue the family.
“It was just too deep; we couldn’t get down far enough,” Mr Darcy said. “We swam around and dived down but we couldn’t see a thing.”
Mr Darcy said he and his partner were cleaning up mud from ex-Cyclone Debbie when the girl turned up dazed and bleeding early yesterday afternoon.
“She was clearly in shock,” Mr Darcy said. “She said ‘our car just went into the river’. She said her mum was still in it.
“We just bolted up there as fast as we could.”
'I COULD SEE BUBBLES OF SINKING CAR': Tragedy on #Tweed with 3 people killed after car plunges into river https://t.co/mwN9tHYWqn pic.twitter.com/9QCwkzIhzI
— Gold Coast Bulletin (@GCBulletin) April 3, 2017
Police said divers would begin their search to retrieve the bodies in the car today after poor conditions and dying light hampered yesterday’s search.
Despite this Mr Grinham took his tinnie out into the water with a depth sounder to make sure the car hadn’t moved late yesterday.
“We fish the area regularly, we know there isn’t really anything else through there,” he said.
NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Jeff Loy said the road the car was travelling on was closed.
“That road was actually closed because of the debris and the mud on the road,” he said.
“We really understand that people want to get to where they need to be and live their lives normally, but this is an extreme event.
“This is about heeding the warnings of the road closures.
“This has been a major event and the emergency services don’t take those closures lightly.”
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